^ Your post in this thread reminds me that I wanted to post this ages ago:

There was a docu on Vic's kids that aired some years ago, it was a series and I liked it a lot and the most shocking thing to me was to learn that Vic, Alb (Alb understandably so) and the kids(!!) had thick German accents, and when the kids came together and would talk with each other, the German accent would grow thicker and thicker (as they kind of reverted back into their sibling roles and in a way to their childhood, like many people change behavioural/ speech patterns when meeting old friends from school or uni or a certain group, if any of you watched How I Met Your Mother, Lily had that with her old uni friend).The whole thing is on youtube

^^IMO, and I've always held to it, Alfred's first choice as a bride was someone, anyone, with a huge dowry. Alfred liked money and as a younger son he didn't have much. He found the right bride in the pudding-faced daughter of Tsar Alexander II who came with lots and lots of money and romantic ideas about young English naval officers.

There was no hereditary blindness in the Hanover line. Frederika's grandfather was Ernst, a younger son of King George III and the Duke of Cumberland. Although scandal-ridden and scar-faced, he certainly wasn't blind. He became King of Hanover because Salic Law ruled in Hanover and therefore Queen Victoria couldn't be monarch there. George, Ernest's son, (also King of Hanover until 1866) became blind in one eye after an accident in his mid teens in 1834. Until then his eyesight was as good as anyone else's. Later the eyesight in the other eye failed.

Anyway, I thought that Frederica, who was somewhat intellectual, was more a great confidante of Prince Leopold, Alfred's younger haemophiliac brother. However, he found out she was in love with someone else, (a German Baron she married at St George's Chapel Windsor.) They remained good friends for the rest of Leopold's life though.

By the end of 1864, Princess Alice, the second daughter, who had noticed that rides in the pony cart at Balmoral were almost the only things which made her mother half cheerful, recommended that John Brown be brought to England. Princess Alice put the idea to Dr. Jenner and to Colonel Phipps, Keeper of the Privy Purse. In December 1864 John Brown came to Osborne House.

^ Very easy to answer. For us nosy people and historians it is dreadful that Beatrice edited Vic's suff, just like Margaret did with queen mum's, but in reality none of us would want every single of our parents' (or our own) grievances and thoughts to be publically known, and we'd do the same for our loved ones as well as hope that someone woud do the same courtesy for us (and some people "clean up" during their lifetime themselves).

In October 1862 news reached London of the deposition of King Otto of Greece. Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh was chosen by the Hellenes by a huge majority as their monarch by choice. Alfred did not accept.